on the habits and diseases of the dog seems unable to tell us what mash he recommends for a tired pointer, and whether he treats distemper with sweet oil or mustard and water, unless he has prefaced his remarks by informing us that the hounds of Theseus "Were bred out of the Spartan kind, and that the poor Indian entertains the hope that, when he has been despatched "to the equal sky," by fire-water, and small-pox, and the other blessings brought to the door of his wigwam by advancing civilization, "his faithful dog shall bear him company." Whether this privilege, if extended to the whole of the canine race, would conduce to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of departed spirits, may reasonably be doubted. There is an officer residing in our boarding-house who was the spirited proprietor of a bulldog which I shot the day before yesterday with a saloon-pistol, and of which I sincerely trust that I have seen the last in this world and the next. There is no one who can bring out a work upon the game of cricket without introducing into his first few pages an allusion to the rhyme "At football or at cricket, How neatly hur could prick it!" impelled apparently by the same myste rious necessity which, in the case of the weak-minded gentleman in "David Copperfield," overruled his efforts to keep King Charles the First out of his memorial. It is fortunate that this tendency is confined to one department of literature. Conceive what it would be if every medical publication commenced with Hezekiah's poultice of figs, every book on tactics or fortification with the battle of four kings against five, and every peerage with Duke Teman, Duke Omar, Duke Zepho, and Duke Kenaz. Indian sport has perhaps suffered more in public estimation by villanously bad writing than any other branch of the gentle craft. People have been so overdone with howdahs, and bottled beer, and hair-triggers, and hair-breadth escapes, and griffins spearing a sow by mistake, that they had rather face a royal Bengal tiger in his native jungle than in the Sporting Magazine, and dread the name of a pig more than the most scrupulous Jew can abhor the reality. What reader of taste does not feel his heart sink within him when, as he flits through the leaves of a periodical, paper-knife in hand, he is aware of a contribution headed, "Pigs and their Stickers; Or, How we keep it up in the North-West. By Nimrod, Junior." 66.6 Mayhap, as he cuts his way through Nimrod Junior's article, in the haste of an absorbing terror, he lights upon a page commencing: your eyes, you 'young greenhorn, keep to your own "side,' and up dashes Major W, the "gallant, the determined, his long beard "floating on the mid-day air; his glance 'beaming as it beamed when he led the "stormers over the glacis at Mooltan. Fly, poor piggy, if thou wantest to re 66 see thy porcine spouse! But faster "flies thy pursuer, his intellectual brow "knit with eagerness, as he just feels "the Pelham pressing the mouth of his "four-year-old." I will endeavour to steer clear of the Scylla of slang and the Charybdis of bombast, and to set down on paper a simple unvarnished history of some most pleasant days passed in very good company. The northern border of the district, of which Mofussilpore is the capital, lies some fifty miles distant from the station. The province is bounded in this quarter by Nepaul, or rather by the Terai, a slip of plain about twenty miles in breadth along the foot of the lower chain of the Himalayas, which we have left in the possession of the Hillmen. It is cultivated by Hindoos, from whom their masters exact a swingeing tribute; and, as most of their revenue is drawn from this source, the fear of losing it makes even Ghorkas shy of a collision with the British Government. The soil is fertile, and intersected by numerous streams, which, fed by the eternal snows of the main chain, afford a more certain supply of water than the great rivers that flow into the Ganges from the South. The ground immediately under the hills is, however, wild and broken, and covered with luxuriant jungles, which swarm with wild animals of every species, from elephants to monkeys. It is the custom of the magnates of Mofussilpore to make an expedition thither in the spring of every year; and Jung Bahadur, the mayor of the palace at the court of Khatmandoo, holds it in high repute as a shooting ground. As the Nepaulese have no "modified reso"lutions concerning the sale of waste "lands," it is probable that this region will long provide abundant sport alike for civil servants and native premiers. Last year the party from the station had been a good deal annoyed by the suspicion with which they had been regarded by the local officials; so Tom had obtained a permit from the great man himself, giving us leave to shoot for twenty days. It was attested by his seal, which gave his title at full length in English, Jung Bahadur, G.C.B., Prime Minister of Nepaul." 66 For months beforehand preparations had been on foot. The arrangements for a shooting party on a grand scale demand no scant amount of administrative capacity, and require all the personal influence of a man in authority to be successfully carried out. Three elephants must be borrowed from one zemindar, and four from another; and the brigadier at Dinapore must be requested to lend the services of a score of his hugest and most earth-shaking beasts, and his pluckiest mahouts. Then tents and howdahs must be looked up and repaired; and a small commissariat department organized for the provisioning of a little army of drivers, grass-cutters, and servants at a distance from the depôts. Then communications must be kept open between the station and the camp, and a daily dawk maintained on a system resembling as little as possible that of the General Post Office of India. Finally, the comfort of the Sahibs must be insured; bacon, cheese, flour, sheep, fowls, beer-shrub, brandy-shrub, sherryshrub, Simkin-shrub, tea-shrub, belattee pawnee, meta-pawnee,1 penicka-pawnee,2 must be despatched on a-head, and a double set of horses be laid down at six-mile stages along the whole line of road. From the 16th to the 19th of February, elephants came to Mofussilpore in quick succession; and, as fast as they arrived, we presented each Mahout with a rupee and a bag of rice, and sent him on to camp. On the evening of the 20th, young Benson, the assistantmagistrate, treated his brother hunters to a bachelor-dinner. We were four in number: our host, Tom, myself, and Mr. Mildred, an indigo-planter who resided in the vicinity-a first-rate spear and a rough-rider, a most keen sportsman, but unselfish enough to consider the sport of others as more important than his own. If ever I am sent to skirmish in open order, I should like to have Mildred for the front-rank man of my file. We got uncommonly jolly, under the combined stimulus of Simkin and anticipation. After dessert was removed, we spent the evening in sewing up bullets in linen-a wise precaution, for it is poor work fumbling for a patch when, having just fired away all your ball at an antelope, you see a streak of yellow and black glancing through the grass twenty yards in front of your elephant. The next morning we rose at halfafter three, and started off into the darkness in two tumtums, or dog-carts. Everybody in these parts keeps at least three horses; and no one who meditates a journey, feels any delicacy about asking for the loan of as many as he requires, from the factories and stations bordering on his route. It soon grew light, and we bowled merrily along at the rate of eight miles an hour, including stoppages, and ferries, and shyings, and boltings, and rearings. The road, not having been constructed under the auspices of the Public Works Department, was in excellent order. A grass causeway ran along the centre, high and dry; while on either side was a sort of ditch sacred to bullock hackeries. Long before each 1 Lemonade. 2 Drinking-water. set of nags had lost their freshness, we came in sight of another pair, standing sometimes beneath an ancient peepultree, sometimes under the walls of a ruined temple, sometimes in a grove of mangoes or palms. Mofussil horses behave in a most fiendish manner at starting; but, when once well off, they complete their stage with laudable zeal and propriety. Some are incorrigible planters, considering it essential to their dignity to stand perfectly still for ten minutes after they have been put between the shafts. Others jib violently and back into the cart-track beneath, while a cascade of gun-cases slides over the rear of the tumtum, and a stream of collectors pours out in front. In other cases, the owner holds the animal's head high in air, to prevent him from kicking the vehicle to pieces; and, when the harness has been adjusted, sends him off at a gallop, and jumps up behind as best he may. By eleven o'clock we had accomplished forty-seven miles in safety, and found ourselves at an old military station on the borders of Nepaul. During the war at the beginning of the century, a battalion had been quartered here, but the place had long been deserted. The bungalows were abandoned to the jackal and the cobra, the compounds were overgrown with brushwood, the wells choked with rubbish. One ancient lady, a Mrs. Grant-whose husband, the regimental surgeon, had died and been buried during the period of our occupation-lived on here for many years in perfect solitude, till she lapsed into semibarbarism, quarrelling with her native servants, and keeping a number of deer and cats under her roof, from which she could not be persuaded to tear herself even after they had departed this life, and become too high to be agreeable pets. The aspect of the burial-ground was melancholy and singular. Amidst a group of trees enclosed within a ruined wall were scattered, fast crumbling to decay, those unsightly masses of brickwork which make hideous the last home of the stranger in India. Here, as elsewhere, most of the inscriptions had been removed by the rustics of the neighbourhood, to be used for grinding their curry; but some few remained, of which one, showing signs of comparatively recent repair, stated itself to be "in affectionate memory of Dr. Grant." Others recorded the names of officers hardly emerged from boyhood, whose preconceived hopes of the excitement of active service and the gaiety of country quarters were realized in ennui, brandy pawnee, jungle-fever, and an early grave. One monument was erected to a Waterloo hero by "his friend, Lord Combermere," who has lived through another generation since his old comrade was buried in the wilds of Nepaul. The last vestige of practicable road ceased at the frontier. So we alighted, unloaded the tumtums, and packed our guns and baggage on a couple of elephants. As the Happy Hunting-grounds were seven coss, or fourteen miles, within the Nepaulese territory, we took a few hours' rest and a hearty tiffin under the shade of a noble banyan-a tree that is to other trees as a patriarchal clan to a modern household. Just as, in primitive times, every community owned a common father, whose memory formed an indissoluble tie long after he was dead and gone, even when the family had increased into a mighty nation; so the banyan is a forest in itself, which, for centuries after every trace of the parent trunk has disappeared, grows outward and upward, till whole battalions might repose within the circuit of its boughs. Here we drank tea, and smoked, and did gymnastics on the branches, and read Tristram Shandy out loud, till three in the afternoon, when we saddled the horses and recommenced our march. Before we had gone many yards, my horse, a fiery young Cabul stallion belonging to Mildred, said Ha, ha, and pitched me over his head; and then proceeded, after their manner, to eat me like a radish, from the feet upwards. He was not, however, destined to enjoy his unhallowed meal in peace; for his owner, who dismounted on the spot, and to my intense relief insisted on changing animals with me, speedily brought him to reason with a pair of heavy spurs and a cotton umbrella. We were conducted by a guide along a track, far more rugged than the fields on either side, through a rich country thickly studded with villages. Tom's eye, more practised or more partial than my own, detected numerous signs of misgovernment. He bade us observe that the tillage had perceptibly fallen off, and that the people lived in wretched wicker huts; while, on his side of the border, each man had his excellent mud cabin thatched with straw. The population was entirely Hindoo; but here and there we came across a Nepaulese official, clothed in skins, and invariably armed with the heavy carved knife which the native tribes far and near dread as the Tarentines and Etrurians dreaded the broadsword of old Rome. Our own sepoys, led by British officers, could not be brought to stand the charge of the Hill-men; and on more than one memorable occasion even the English bayonets gave way before the Ghorka blades. For a whole year, the regular army of Nepaul, a mere handful of some 12,000 warriors, defended their extensive frontier against tremendous odds. The earlier engagements in the war read like Prestonpans and Killiecrankie. At length, when Ochterlony, acting with great caution and skill, had outmanœuvred the chiefs of these Highlanders of the east, they avoided a Culloden, by signifying their agreement to an equitable peace, the terms of which have been faithfully observed by both parties-an instance of mutual respect rare in India. The specimens of the race whom we passed on the road, to judge by their appearance, would be awkward customers in a surprise or foray. Short, with thick firm limbs, light complexions, long matted hair, and an inexpressibly humorous cast of features, they looked us full in the face, and laughed and talked with a freedom and dignity which had quite a bracing effect on men accustomed to Bengalee servility and effeminacy. In fact, the Ghorkas are a military aristocracy, like the Spartans of blue blood; the other Nepaulese represent the Lakedæ monians or Pericki (in gratitude to dear Mr. Grote for that history which all scholars love, and all pedants hate and envy, I make a point of spelling to his fancy), while the Hindoos of the Terai are little better than Helots. In a bold and singularly unsuccessful attempt to take a flying leap over a mud wall, Benson broke a stirrup-leather, and, while he stopped to mend it with his boot-laces, Tom took occasion to question the villagers about the system adopted by the Nepaulese for getting in the revenue, expecting to obtain some information concerning the grades and duties. of the collectors, the nature and amount of the assessment, the permanency of the settlement, &c. His audience burst out laughing, and replied that the received method of collecting consisted in placing a lattee, which is the name for the quarter-staff carried by all Indian peasants, under the defaulter's knee, and raising his leg till he became able to pay up. As to a permanent settlement, the Government officers sometimes brought a ryot's elbows behind his back, passed a lattee under them, hung him by his heels to a tree, and settled him there permanently, unless his quota was forthcoming; but they had never heard of any other. The amount of the assessment seemed to average about four times the sum that would be exacted for the same lands by the English Treasury, with as much more as could be squeezed out of the tenants by these legitimate means of coercion. In return for the tribute, the Imperial Government does not appear to have provided its subjects with cheap and speedy justice, or with facilities for the instruction of their children, or any of the other benefits by which we seek to compensate the natives for the loss of their independence, and salve our own consciences; while the state of the roads and of the irrigation went to show that the Khatmandoo Department of Public Works was hardly superior in efficiency to our own. The whole strength of the Ghorka administration seems to be concentrated on their War Office, and their Prime Ministers are better hands at shooting their uncles through the back with blunderbusses, than at compiling codes or devising sweeping measures of popular education. As we went by a miserable hovel, a man ran out, and, putting up his hands in the attitude of prayer, as is the universal custom among natives when addressing a superior, entreated Tom to cure him of a bloody flux, from which he had suffered for the space of two years. Tom said, kindly, that if he would come to Mofussilpore, every attention should be paid to his case; but this was not what the poor fellow wanted. He had fondly imagined that the Sahib would make him whole by a word or a touch. Europeans are rarer birds and more like black swans in these parts than in the British dominions, and very mysterious notions exist concerning their powers for good and evil. This was a fair instance of what the missionary tracts call "Illustrations of Scripture." How sick one got as a child of those little green books, which never tired of informing us that the Chinese rice-growers even now cast their bread on the waters and find it after many days; and that even now the Hindoos take up their beds and walk. The similes, drawn by our Saviour from the familiar scenes around him, come home to one with great force out here. Every week a magistrate, in Cutcherry, disposes of cases which forcibly remind one how little twenty centuries have modified the immutable ways of oriental agricultural life. Still, when a farmer goes forth at dawn to find his boundary stone rolled inwards, or his crop choked with tares, he knows that แ an enemy hath done this." Still the unjust Gomastah calls his lord's tenants unto him, and bids one who owes a hundred seers of indigo take his bill and write fifty, and another who owes a hundred maunds of grain take his bill and write fourscore, trusting wisely to the selfish gratitude of the mammon of unrighteousness. Still, when some strong man of doubtful loyalty has been deprived of his weapons under the Disarming Act, the dacoits dig through the wall, and first bind the strong man, and then spoil his house. The excessive aversion to pedestrian exercise that prevails among old residents, and the great difficulty which a fresh arrival experiences in obtaining a companion for a walk, frequently recalls the text which enjoins a special manifestation of unselfishness. More than once have I induced a good Christian to go with me a mile sorely against his will, who, when we have accomplished that distance, has freely offered to complete the twain. As we approached the mountains the crops became poorer and fewer, and the patches of cultivation were surrounded with rude fences-a sure sign that we were coming into the region of deer. At length we entered upon a grass plain sprinkled with brushwood, fringed on three sides with jungle. It was now the cool of the evening, and we put our horses into a gallop, which soon brought us to the border of a vast wood. After winding about through the trees for the better part of an hour, we hit upon the camp just before dark; and a very picturesque scene it was. The tents stood in an open space of an acre and a half or two acres, enclosed in the primæval forest. Along the west side of the encampment, at the foot of a bank that went sheer down to the depth of thirty feet, ran the river Bogmutty babbling over the pebbles like a Highland burn. To use the expression of old Pepys, it was pretty to see the excitement of my companions at the sound and aspect of a running brook. Men who, for a dozen years, had never known anything but stagnant tanks, or wide sluggish streams the colour of pea-soup, were beside themselves with delight at the tinkling of the water as it rippled over the shingle, the deep, clear pools "with here and there a lusty trout," the peewits calling to each other from the brink, the rocks which afforded so inviting a dressing-room to bathers who were sceptical on the subject of crocodiles. At a distance of some six miles to the northward the Himalayas sprang straight up from the plain to |